


give me a try

by elinadsy



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Canon Typical Swearing, Canon Typical Violence, Canon typical drug use, EXTREMELY IMPORTANT - disregards the season 13 chardee retcon, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, PLEASE do not read if this is a problem for you, Slow Burn, canon divergence - "The Gang Goes to Hell", canon typical bigotry, dennis is a bastard man, mac/dennis is very minor, trigger warning for sexual abuse and rape mentions regarding Charlie's childhood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-07-23 21:38:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16167407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elinadsy/pseuds/elinadsy
Summary: INDEFINITELY ON HIATUS AS OF 9/9/18I thought I was ok with ignoring the Chardee retcon, but can no longer continue doing so in good conscience. As such, I am discontinuing this fic. Thank you for your support.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I usually never write such a long note, but in light of season 13, I'm laying this on the table so after, we can all just have a good time lmao
> 
> So I began writing this before the retcon, and I really liked it, and I'm going to post it. If you are still here despite the warning in the summary and you disagree with my choice/wish to ignore the retcon, do NOT read this fic. It operates on the original consensual way in which Dee and Charlie's kiss was framed. If you want to know why I am choosing to ignore the retcon, you can read some great meta here (trigger warning for rape mentions):
> 
> http://tatsuyamashiro.co.vu/post/178499841966/deflecting-onto-dee-instead-of-dealing-with-the
> 
> http://tatsuyamashiro.co.vu/post/178517976831/1-i-think-a-lot-of-the-issues-people-are-having
> 
> http://tatsuyamashiro.co.vu/post/178528582526/can-the-well-meaning-ppl-writing-reams-of-meta
> 
> To those of us who the retcon was downright awful to and who want to still enjoy this ship which had frankly been a lovely beacon of potential self-improvement, this is for you! Some general Chardee meta which made (and still makes) me very happy/which partially inspired this fic:
> 
> http://tatsuyamashiro.co.vu/post/167249417366/on-the-tentatively-romantic-nature-of-charlie
> 
> http://tatsuyamashiro.co.vu/post/177945891446/just-rewatched-the-gang-misses-the-boat-the-other
> 
> I want to reassure anyone reading this that this fic will very much not "woobify" the characters- however, there WILL be a happy ending and there WILL be reasonable character development within the confines of who the Gang are, because you know what? This is a damn fanfic and I wanna have a good time.
> 
> The title comes from The Wombat's "Give Me a Try", which I heartily recommend listening to because it's a Chardee Icon lmao
> 
> (All done!!!!! go enjoy the fic!!!!!!!)

_I love you, sis,_ Dennis had said, and the hot disbelief and anger had locked any similar sentiment in her throat, an emotional metal born of years, _years,_ of not being good enough.

 Really, what better time to have the last word?

 So she said devastatingly, _whatever,_ and Dee Reynolds accepted her untimely demise, prepared for the pain of choking to death on dirty salt water, watched every regret and bad thing she had ever done play back like a home video in the recesses of her mind.

 Laying in bed alive and aching not even a day later, what sticks with her, insult to egregious injury, is how little she has _done_ , how little she has _achieved_. She’s always been aware of it but faced with cold water and darkness around her, it couldn’t be drowned out, couldn’t be put aside.

 Stereotypical? Absolutely. Infuriatingly so. But that shame and anger has its fingers wrapped around her windpipe, _I deserved more than this_ , and she lays in bed for a full two days, sick with resigned fury.

 On the third day after nearly drowning, she goes for a walk to get some cigarettes. It’s a nice day, nicer than it has any business being, and Dee finds herself walking a little longer, walking past the 7/11 she usually stops in at, absently following an increasing stream of people. Before she knows it, she’s in front of the Community College of Philadelphia.

 Speckled teenagers and harried looking parents are everywhere (minimal old people, thank God, though one particularly wrinkled bitch catches her wary eye). Must be some dumbass event for dumbass students. Gross.

 But she steps onto the campus, for some reason. It’s better than thinking about her failures; thinking about how the majority of these kids are going to be as useless as her is reassuring.

 Hm. More adults than she thought, actually. A surprising amount without kids. Mature age students then. Losers.

 ( _Just like you_ , her mother says. Shut up, Mom, you stupid dead bitch.)

 The campus is okay. Nicer than Paddy’s- not that that’s hard. A wet fart in a burlap sack is better than that hell hole.

 She walks behind a middle aged man. He’s too fat for her to be interested, but he’s stopping and asking questions she can’t help but find herself wondering as well, like _what can this do to supplement my career_ , and _how much is this course?_ The answers are _quite a bit_ and _surprisingly cheap_ (though still expensive), respectively. Then he stops to ask some young woman about sports clubs and Dee peels away from him.

 Another stall catches her eye- _Do you want to be a teacher?_ It says, in bright block letters.

 Something sparks in her. It’s a reluctant interest, dragging her step by step to the attractive man staffing the stall. He has brochures and nice hair and - terrible teeth, never mind.

 “Interested in teaching?” He smiles.

 “I dunno,” she mutters, embarrassed. She’s thirty eight for fuck’s sake, what is she doing here, _stop looking at me_. He falters, and she hopes he takes the hint as she scans the table awkwardly-

 “If you have any questions-“

 “Oh, my God,” Dee says.

 “The brochures-“

 “I’ll take a brochure if it means you’ll stop talking to me,” Dee snaps, picking one up; she waves it in his face and then stuffs the brochure in her bag. She then ignores the man’s affronted look and leaves before any other dipshits try to talk to her and picks up a pack of expensive smokes on the way home.

 When Dee gets home, she tosses her bag aside, lights a cigarette and opens some windows. Sunlight streams in, and she stares at her apartment. At the lack of happy photos and whatever else normal, functioning adults have. Decorative plates? She should buy some decorative plates, probably. Maybe some abstract art. Hm. And a pet. Maybe she should get a cat again?

 But instead of doing something, she sits on the couch and scrolls endlessly through Facebook and orders Chinese for dinner and then forgets about the brochure entirely.

 

-

 

It’s the last day before Paddy’s opens back up, and she’s on the couch again in the late afternoon when she realizes she has conspicuously not heard from the guys. A familiar pang, one she ruthlessly squashes down. Fuck them. Fuck those assholes. Fuck them, fuck Paddy’s, fuck this, she’s going to _drink_.

 Dee has one, two, four, seven glasses of wine (from a musty bottle of red she forgot she had, she really needs to get some more beer), and puts on some music, and the urge strikes her to dance. So she does. She flings her arms akimbo and gets wine on her top and kicks her bag and-

 God _damnit._

 The room spins as she bends over to pick up her spilled lipsticks and tampons, and the music is pounding and she sees the brochure.

 The paper is wrinkled, but shiny, and still good, and she stares at the face of the late twenty-something woman printed on it, clearly teaching something to someone, and she looks fulfilled and happy and Dee bets her mother loved her-

 Tears on her face, Jesus _Christ, Dee, you pathetic little idiot, you idiot stupid bird idiot-_

The brochure shakes in her grasp, and she can almost _hear_ Dennis rolling his eyes, _for God’s sake Dee you haven’t even finished the bottle yet,_ and instead of crumpling the brochure up (she knows that’s what Dennis would have wanted) she opens up her battered laptop and before she realises quite what she’s doing, she’s signed up for a Certificate in Tertiary Education and her bank account is several hundred dollars emptier.

 

-

 

The next week passes very slowly. Technically, she’s a student now, and isn’t that a crazy (embarrassing)  thought? It bubbles up in her chest, this _stupid_ , drunken decision, grabbing her by the tonsils. But it sustains her somehow, too; Dennis’s remarks can’t bring her down; she tends bar and doles out sarcastic, tongue scorching jeers. Everything glances off of her. Even the usual _bird_ comments lose what bite they had left.

 She doesn’t buy textbooks (she can pirate them online, duh) but she does treat herself to a professional looking and pleasingly inexpensive shoulder bag.

 She’s going to be a _teacher_.

 But it’s embarrassing too, right? Some dumbass barmaid trying to turn her life around? So she makes the decision to make her classes all mornings. Since they don’t open these days until lunchtime, she can avoid telling the guys what she’s doing. Said timetable consists of five morning classes a week. She’s going to ace every one of them. She’s going to _Legally Blonde_ this bullshit if it kills her.

 “You’re happy today,” Dennis observes suspiciously, the Sunday afternoon before her classes start.

 “Bite me,” she says brightly, and he scowls as she heads into the back to get a fresh dish rag.

 Charlie is in there, doing something in the corner; he’s hunched over Frank’s laptop.

 They stare at each other.

 (Inevitably, as she always does, when she and Charlie are alone in the same room together, she remembers. Dee remembers his hands on her back, his thigh at the crease of her, the smell of dish soap and musty clothes. His lips urgently on hers, the feeling of being wrapped away from the world, _safe_ , Charlie’s warm breath on her neck and her name in his mouth, scratchy and surprised-)

 “What?” Charlie says. He looks a little nervous. She wonders if he’s remembering that night as well. “‘M kinda busy.”

 “I just wanted a dish rag, calm your tits,” Dee says, eyeing the laptop suspiciously. “You can go back to beating your meat over those candids of the waitress in five seconds, tops.”

 Charlie flushes, slams the laptop shut. Dee rolls her eyes and crosses the room, reaches over the top of where he sits to pull out a rag from the little box they keep them in.

 There’s a moment, briefly, where Dee’s top rides up as she reaches, and she feels Charlie’s eyes on her stomach, hot and intent, but then it’s over; when she leaves the room, she doesn’t even look at him.

 ( _Leave it be, leave it alone._ )

 

-

 

The next day, Monday, she steps onto campus nervous and self-conscious. She passes gaggles of students, all bright eyed and shiny faced, barely out of high school, clean sneakers and excited smiles. Suddenly, she’s the Aluminum Monster again. She can feel the brace around her- feel the clench on her sides and the aches in her body, the physical sensation of people staring and laughing at her-

 Dee wants to shrink into herself, fold into herself, but she’s too tall, too gawky. She fishes out her sunglasses, puts them on. There. Now she’s just a tall, maybe late-twenties woman, right? Much better.

 She checks the campus map she saved on her phone and arrives at her class five minutes before it starts. Dee picks a table near the back, dumps her bag on the table as if she isn’t barely holding back a gag. She takes out a notebook and a pen and watches as people file in into the room.

 They’re all over twenty five, she’s sure, and the knot in her sternum relaxes just a little. She could pass for thirty in this light, she’s almost certain of it.

 The teacher, a plump woman in her fifties with wrinkles at the corner of her eyes and a big mole on her left cheek, bustles in a little late- only five minutes or so, but it’s enough to set Dee’s nerves on edge, but not as much as who walks in next.

 “Fatty Magoo?” she bursts out, and the entire classroom turns their heads to her. She feels the flush race across her face as Ingrid Nelson raises a very unimpressed eyebrow. Upon seeing the only seat is next to Dee (Ingrid stares at the chair for a very long time, and Dee shrinks into her chair even further) she reluctantly sits down.

 Fatty- _Ingrid_ \- looks classy and _young_ and when was the last time Dee saw her? Oh, _right_ \- at the high school reunion, where she made a complete _ass_ out of herself.

 Dee clears her throat, and says brightly, “Hi! How are you!”

 Ingrid looks dead ahead, and Dee’s mouth thins. Seriously?

 “Hey,” Dee tries again.

 Nothing. Ingrid looks royally uninterested.

 “ _Hey,_ ” Dee says, now actually pissed off. “I’m talking to you.”

 At this, Ingrid huffs air out of her nose and turns incrementally to face her. “What do you want, Dee?”

 Flat, uninviting tone, and Dee’s hackles raise.

 “What’s your problem?” Dee says, a little too loudly; the man in front of her turns his head. Dee stares at him until he looks away, lowers her voice. “I’m trying to be nice, since, you know, we’re both the only mid thirties losers here-”

 “Excuse me?” Ingrid says. “Why am _I_ a loser?”

 “Because- I mean- you’re taking a course at a community college, you’re nearly forty, you’re Fatty M-”

 Ingrid stands up, abruptly; her chair skids back, and everyone turns _again_ to look at them, including the teacher; Dee hadn’t even noticed she had started talking.

 “I’m sitting somewhere else,” Ingrid announces, and drags her chair away from Dee as far as she can.

 Everyone stares at Dee, heavy and judgemental, and Dee swallows, feeling how her face is almost maroon with it.

 “Well, fuck you too,” Dee replies lamely.

 “If everyone is _quite_ done,” the teacher says, looking very uncomfortable.

 “I’m done,” Dee says quickly. “It’s her that’s the bitch, not me.”

 The teacher laughs nervously, clearly unsure if Dee’s joking. “As I was saying, my name is Beatrice Williams, I’ll be teaching your Intro to Teaching and Learning…”

 Dee tunes out, scratching on her notebook, brows knitted. She can feel people keep turning back to look at her, and she’s shrinking into herself again, _it’s not her fault_ -

 But Dee has an odd thought, an unfamiliar feeling, sick and heavy- shame. She’s _ashamed._ Jesus Christ. Ashamed? Over Fatty M-

  _Ingrid_ , some part of her thinks.

 Ingrid, fine, whatever, fuck this and fuck her. She’s not here to make friends anyway, right? She’s here to get a liveable wage and fuck over her brother. So Dee drags her attention back to Beatrice and does her best to pretend she isn’t still red, pretends she doesn’t acutely feel the empty seat next to her.

 

-

 

Ingrid is in all her classes except one, so Dee is forced to feel Ingrid’s snubbery four times a week. Her gaze passes over Dee like she isn’t there, and each time Dee comes to class, Ingrid is already there, sitting next to someone else, engaged in friendly chit chat.

 No one has sat next to Dee. Not once.

 “So, we know that this policy changed the way teaching tertiary education is done today,” their _School and Policy_ teacher, Jack, drones.

Dee scratches down notes when she thinks they seem interesting. She was kind of hoping for a Robin Williams sort of deal here, being taught to be inspiring _by_ someone inspiring. But teaching isn’t just about telling kids what to do, apparently. It’s got all this history and rules and laws and shit, and it’s… kinda overwhelming.

 No-one else seems bothered besides her. Everyone is sitting to attention, diligently taking notes. _Nerds._

 After her classes, she goes home, throws together a sandwich, has a nap, and then it’s off to Paddy’s.

 “For fuck’s sake, Dee,” Dennis snaps as soon as she steps in; the bar is unusually full, and he’s tending bar. “Where were you?”

 “My alarm didn’t wake me up,” she mutters, which isn’t a lie.

 “I don’t care, just do your job,” he says, throwing his dishtowel down. “Mac, where’s Charlie?”

 Mac, who is actually carding someone for once, shrugs across the room.

 “Great, _again_ he goes missing when the tap line is blocked,” Dennis says, throws his arms up. “Fantastic!”

 “You could do it yourself,” Dee points out, pouring a customer a beer.

 “ _You could do it yourself_ ,” he repeats back mockingly. “Go find him.”

 “Goddamnit, Dennis, I’m tending bar?” she reminds him. “Remember?”

 “Just do it,” he tells her, and disappears into the backroom.

  _Asshole_ , she thinks. _Stupid cunt turkey idiot dick_.

 She serves the customers in waiting as quickly as she can, then ducks into the alleyway. Sometimes Charlie comes out here to mix up whatever ridiculously powerful concoction he needs to sniff or to clean the urinals, so she isn’t surprised when she finds him crouching just next to the entrance.

 “Hey, Dennis needs you to clear the tap lines,” she says, checking her watch. Christ, eight more hours of this shit to go.

 Charlie clearly didn’t hear her come out; he looks up, panicked, and shoves something she can’t see back into a dirty backpack.

 “Dude, if you’re out here getting high while Dennis yells at me…” she begins warningly.

 “I’m not getting high,” Charlie replies. “Geez, Dee, I was doing something _important_.”

 “Whatever, dicklip,” Dee says automatically. His eyes are red rimmed, but she’s struck by the obvious lack of Drug Smell, how his clothes are rumpled but not as dirty as usual. What’s he doing out here?

 Charlie stands up, holding the backpack to his chest, as if Dee’s going to lunge at him and rifle through it.

 “What have you got in there?” she says curiously.

 “None of your business,” Charlie says in an abruptly high pitched tone, and shoves past her.

 “Asshole!” she calls after him, but it’s half-hearted. He’s probably got a raccoon corpse and some spray paint or something.

 “Bitch!” she hears him call back, just as half hearted, and she huffs.

 Whatever.

 

-

 

On Sunday, as Dee reviews her notes before going to her afternoon shift, she feels a little overwhelmed by how they’ve so quickly accumulated. God knows she was never the best student, and it’s been years since she had to actually _study_. They’ve already been given an assignment. She’s spent so much money on this, she can’t fail, but also-

 This shit is _hard_.

 And Ingrid seemed to have no problem listening or taking notes, probably because she runs her own fucking business, stupid fat bitch-

 That little voice in her again, _you’re jealous._

 She’s not! She’s not jealous. Ingrid is just. A bitch.

 A bitch who is doing well in class, though. Dee runs a hand down her face. Maybe she should… eurgh, God, the thought makes her prickly. She should. Maybe. Try to be nice to Ingrid?

 The thought is uncomfortable. Partly because Dee knows Ingrid has the upper hand. _Dee_ used to be the one in power.

 (How come _Ingrid_ was the one who turned out alright? Dee tried so fucking _hard_.)

 Well, the certificate is only a year long course, Dee reasons to herself. She only has to pretend to like Ingrid four times a week. She’s done more painful things. Usually in the name of money or sex.

 Just another scheme. She can do that.

 (Right?)

 

-

 

Dee tries the first time after Monday’s class. She steps in front of Ingrid as the other woman goes to leave, and Ingrid meets her eyes for a split second, then just shoulders past her.

 “Wow,” Dee says. “Were you raised in a _barn_!”

 Her voice is raised but she’s the only one left in the room.  

 “Whatever,” she says to the empty tables.

 Try, try again.

 The next day, she gets there late, and manages to get the seat behind Ingrid.

 “Hey,” she whispers, as Beatrice continues her explanation of teaching techniques. “ _Hey_.”

 Ingrid doesn’t even flinch, and steadfastly ignores her. Even as Dee is frowning in annoyance, she’s embarrassed as well, defensive, crosses her arms and hunches down into her chair.

 She’ll try one more time, she thinks. One more time, and then she’ll just have to con someone into teaching her for free.

 Dee’s going to have to do something she doesn’t want to do.

 She’s going to have to ( _eurgh_ ) apologise.

 

-

 

The opportunity doesn’t arise until the day after tomorrow. Dee mechanically attends her shift, rehearsing how best to sound sincere to a person who actually thought her remarks about beauty and success or whatever the hell teenage-Dee said was _genuine_.

 Well. It can’t be too hard now she thinks about it, actually.

 “Hey, Deandra,” Frank says from where he sits at the bar.

 “What.”  

 “Charlie say anything to you?”

 Dee pauses in polishing her glass to look up at him. “About…?”

 Frank shrugs. The motion sends his beer slopping onto the counter and Dee rolls her eyes. “I dunno. The kid’s been all over the place. Secretive like.” Frank makes a face. “He better not be trying to grow his own cheese again.”  

 Dee blinks at him as she mops up the mess he’s made on the counter. “You don’t… you don’t _grow_ cheese.”

 “Maybe not _good_ cheese,” Frank says darkly.

 “You guys seen Charlie?” Mac says, loping up to the counter.

 “We were just talking about him,” Frank says.  

 “Well, Dennis is bitching about the urinals being too dirty. And I told him, look, that’s what happens when you have a literal pissing contest-”

 “Oh, ew,” Dee grimaces.

 “-which I won, by the way- anyway, that falls under Charlie Work, so,” Mac concludes, hands on his hips, “Where’s Charlie?”

 “I got no clue,” Frank shrugs.

 “Probably out huffing glue in the alley,” Dee says quickly, already seeing how Mac’s eyes are turning to her (she’s next in line after Charlie for Charlie Work, and she isn’t going _near_ those urinals).

 “Yeah, fair,” he says, and heads out back.

 “Smooth,” Frank says approvingly, and Dee hates that even that ridiculously tiny amount of praise from a man who isn’t even her father (not really) still feels good.

 

-

 

The next day, at the end of class when Ingrid gets up to leave, Dee’s hand shoots out, grabs her wrist, locks on even as Ingrid tries to yank her arm away.

 “Let go of me,” Ingrid snaps.  

 “Just- wait,” Dee says, frustrated.

 “ _What_. What do you want.”

 “I wanted to... apologise,” Dee mumbles, hot distaste prickling over her, immediately regretting everything even as she tries to remember this is for the sake of her grades. God, why do people ever fucking apologise?

 Ingrid stops, and when Dee judges she’s isn’t going to stalk off, lets go of her. Ingrid doesn’t say anything- just stands there, crosses her arms, looking at her with a carefully schooled expression.

 “Did I hear you right?” Ingrid says. “You want to _apologise_?”

 “God, please don’t drag this out,” Dee grumbles.

 Ingrid looks at her watch very pointedly, and Dee raises her hands in resignation.

 “I maybe was _kiiiiind_ of not nice to you,” she says, very conscious of the other student in the room who is busy cramming his textbook into an overstuffed backpack.

 Ingrid raises her eyebrows incredulously. “When?”

 “Oh, um, you know.”

 “No, I’m afraid I _don’t_ ,” Ingrid says.

 “Oh come on, Ingrid,” Dee says, embarrassment rounding back into frustration. “Can’t we just- be friends again?”

 Ingrid says nothing, just turns back to her back and starts putting her things away.

 Dee groans loudly. “Fine! Goddamnit. Fine. Ingrid, I was a bitch to you in high school, and a decade ago, and like, two-three?-two years ago. And I’m sorry. For being a bitch. Happy now?”

 Ingrid gives her a long look and eventually says, “Okay, so, you know how apologies work, right?”

 “Duh? I just gave you a pretty good one.” God, when is she going to be _nice_? Dee apologised, what else does she want?

 Ingrid makes a face which suggests she disagrees. “Look, when you apologise, it means you won’t do it again. That you’ve learnt from your mistakes, and that you’re going to _change._ ”

 Dee laughs, but Ingrid isn’t joking.

 “So if you want to be friendly with me, fine,” Ingrid tells her, and there’s a note of steel Dee has never heard before in her voice. “But I don’t take shit anymore, least of all from you.”

 “...Okay,” Dee says, a little cowed.

 “Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 Ingrid leaves and Dee just stands there for a while. She had expected- hoped- that Ingrid would roll over like a dog for her, bare her emotional belly, but instead, _Dee’s_ the one that feels like the pet, like she’s been scolded.

 Oh. She kind of was, wasn’t she? Then why didn’t it feel… why didn’t it feel more personal? Where was the jeering? The sharp tongued comments? The swearing?

  _Because Ingrid isn’t a piece of shit like me_ , she thinks, and the thought is disturbingly undisturbing. Dee isn’t that bad.

 (Right?)

 

-

 

That night, her apartment is quiet and still and she hates it. The television casts long, strange shadows, and the beer in her hand is lukewarm and it’s all mediocre and awful and terrible.

 Dee remembers those first few shining years after school, when the world seemed vast and wonderful and full of opportunities. Opportunities that were bright and plentiful. Nearly two decades later, and now they are all but gone; it feels she has barely scrambled onto this safe path in time, a thought that fills her with a quiet, nameless dread.

 Her mother would be in her sixties now, if she were still alive. Dee wonders for a split second what she would say if Dee told her about her recent enrolment, but she can easily imagine the barbed words Barbara Reynolds would have for her. Even now, it feels like the specter of her looms long in Dee’s life, impossible to escape, cruel and sharp.

 It occurs to Dee that she desperately needs to piss, the need cutting across her introspection. So she gets up and goes to her shitty little bathroom and turns the water yellow and then the fucking thing won’t _flush,_ why isn’t there water coming out?

 “God _damnit_ ,” Dee says under her breath. It’s a Friday night and it’ll cost a fortune to get a plumber out this late, and she still hasn’t bought tools because why would she? This is _Charlie Work-_

Oh. Duh.

Dee fumbles for her phone. Charlie picks up on the first ring.

 “ _Hey-yo.”_

 “Charlie, hey, do you feel like fixing my toilet?”  

 “ _Uh, who is this?”_

“Goddamnit, Charlie-”

 “ _Oh, hey Dee.”_

“Of course it’s me, do any _other_ women call you?” she snaps.

 “ _Uh, plenty of women call me,”_ Charlie says defensively, and something in Dee holds her by the tongue as she goes to say something cutting-

  _(You know how apologies work, right?_ )

 “Look,” she says. “My toilet is fucked. Come fix it.”

 “ _What’s in it for me?”_

“Me not pissing all over the bar tomorrow,” she replies. Charlie laughs, and the sound takes her by surprise, the genuineness of it.

 “ _You couldn’t hold your pee in that long, no way.”_

“Look, I’ll give you a beer?” Goddamnit but he’s right; she’s already feeling the need to piss creeping back up on her.

 “ _Aw, yeah! I’ll be there in five.”_

Dee frowns. His place is at least a forty minute walk from her. “Five-?”

 “ _See you soon,”_ he says cheerfully, and hangs up.

 True to his word, Charlie somehow shows up five minutes later. He’s wearing a surprisingly clean t-shirt under his military jacket for once, that old backpack from a few days ago slung over his shoulder.

 “What were you doing so nearby?” Dee asks curiously.

 He shrugs, and Dee’s eyes narrow. His expression is evasive and he raises on his toes to try and see over her shoulder. “Are you gonna let me in or what?”

 “Whatever,” she says, and surreptitiously sniffs him as he passes. No sewer scent, and only the faintest whiff of cheese. Weird. “Toilet’s in there.”

 “I know,” he says, pausing in his tracks to dump his backpack on her kitchen counter, and their eyes meet.

 Of course he knows. Stupid.

 (She could count every freckle on his face from here. She can see the strands of green in his eyes.)

 Dee looks away first.

 “So, what’d you do?” Charlie asks. He takes off his jacket and drops it on her couch. “Did you use too much toilet paper? Is there a rat in there?”

 “Why,” Dee says, “Would there be a rat in there?”

 He shrugs. “Rats like toilets, Dee. It’s like a free bath.”

 She follows him into the bathroom, where he flips the lid up, and Dee tries not to cringe as the smell of urine rises up.

 “Wow,” he says. God, does her piss smell that bad?

 “What?”

 “Your piss is so light. You should go probably go see a doctor.”

 “Oh, my God, Charlie,” Dee says, and then a thought strikes her. “Wait- what color is yours?”

 Charlie scratches his beard. “Like, super dark yellow? Sometimes brown, I guess.”

  “Do you drink _any_ water?” (Like she’s one to talk).

 “Sometimes.” Charlie takes off the cistern lid, tries flushing the toilet again and watches in mild interest as no water comes out.

 “Charlie, you should _really_ drink more water.”

 “Nah,” he says. “We’re already like, sixty percent water right? I gotta leave room for food. And my organs, I guess.”

 Dee decides this isn’t going to go anywhere and says instead, “So what’s wrong with it?”

 “Your float ball is too low,” Charlie says, as if this means anything, and just reaches into the cistern with his bare fucking hand and bends something upwards. With his other hand, he tries flushing two more times; on the third try, her pee and toilet paper flushes away.

 “Thanks, Charlie,” she says, and means it, and then makes him wash his hands. With soap.

 “Easy peasy,” he shrugs afterwards, and then looks out at the kitchen expectantly.

 “Yeah, yeah, hold on,” Dee mutters, and goes and gets him a beer.

 “Cool,” he says, pulling his jacket back on. Once his backpack is on, he takes the beer from her and she’s a little confused.

 “You aren’t drinking it here?” she asks.

 “Nah,” he says, and can’t quite meet her eyes. “I should be heading home. Got a game of Nightcrawlers to get to with Frank.”

 A moment drags itself by, where Dee feels like Charlie’s waiting for her reply; she should say something but she doesn’t know what.

 “Well, see you around,” Charlie says, glancing at her as he turns the doorknob.

 “Sure,” she says, watching him go, and her apartment is empty once more.

 

-

 

On Monday, when Dee comes to class, Ingrid is there and the seat next to her is empty.

 Dee squares her shoulders, thinks of her grades, and approaches her. She can feel a few of the other classmates watching her as she says hesitantly, “Can I sit here?”

 Ingrid looks at her, and then shrugs. “Sure.”

 So Dee sits down, and it feels somehow like a victory.

 They don’t talk, but after class, when Ingrid leaves, she says to Dee, “See you tomorrow.”

 “Yeah,” Dee says. “See you tomorrow.”

 

-

 

This little interaction becomes a routine over the next week. Dee will politely ask to sit next to her, and Ingrid will let her, and then Dee will fail to actually talk to her.

 Dee’s always so afraid of other women, afraid of their success and her failure. Ingrid intimidates her, makes her feel stupid and small and worthless, with her business and her nice face and well proportioned elbows. Dee knows how to act around the Gang, but she has no idea how to act around a normal person.

 It takes her a couple of days, but she eventually manages to ask during a lecture break, “So why teaching?”

 Ingrid smiles. “I guess I was getting sick of running the shop.”

 Dee simultaneously can and can’t relate to this. “But- you had the dream! You actually did what you said you were going to as a kid!”  
 Ingrid shrugs. “Sure. But I’m ready to try something new.”

 “Like?”

 “I want to teach about entrepreneurship. I figure I’m pretty qualified, right? I just need a piece of paper to seal the deal.”

 Ingrid returns to her note taking as Jack starts talking, effectively ending the conversation, but Dee finds it difficult to focus; she’s wanted to be an actress her entire life. She can’t even begin to comprehend achieving that and then just… not wanting to do it, one day. She wants to teach, sure, but a significant part of her still wants to be in front of a camera, wants people to gaze at her adoringly, to idolise her.

 How could she not?

 After class, Dee and Ingrid part ways- Ingrid heads off the north side of the campus- and Dee heads east to walk home. She’s thinking about her study notes as rounds a corner at the same time as someone else; they’re sturdy, compact, knocking into her and sending her on her ass and her bag spilling on the ground, and her temper flares.

 “Thanks, asshole,” she snaps, reaching over to pick up her books. Her butt hurts and she’s grazed the palm of her hand, but her annoyance is far more prevalent. “Look where you’re fucking going, why don’t you-”

 “ _Dee?”_

 She looks up, and there are those hazel eyes and those freckles she knows so well. Her mouth drops open.

 “ _Charlie?_ What are you doing here?”

 “I- I was-” Charlie looks panicked, and Dee sees his shitty backpack’s zipper has broken, sending a textbook that isn’t hers by her foot. She sits up and picks it up, even as he tries to grab it before her, and some old childish instinct has her leaning back out of his reach.

  _Reading with Phonics_ , it’s called, and something stirs in her chest.

 Charlie meets her eyes and they’re full of fear. She doesn’t know what to say, embarrassment curling in her chest. They’re both locked in a stand-off, a ridiculous sitting stand-off, and Dee is sorting through possible lies when Charlie says quietly, “I’m, uh taking an adult reading class.”

 “No shit,” Dee says before she can stop herself, but there’s no bite in it. Charlie is watching her like he’s waiting for her to bite his head off.

 She could do it, too.

_(I'm realizing that I only do that stuff 'cause I don't want the guys to do it to me first, you know what I mean?)_

 Dee offers him the book. He takes it, and they quietly pack their books away. Charlie is the first to stand up, and he hesitantly offers her his hand. Dee takes it just as hesitantly, curls her fingers across his rough, warm skin.

 “So, uh, what about you?” Charlie asks. “Why are _you_ here?”

 There feels a sense of gravity about this question. He’s trusted her, and she could lie, couldn’t she? She could just pretend she was here for a walk, and he’d never be able to prove otherwise, and she’d be the one coming out on top, in a position of power-

 (His hands firm on her hips and his humming rumbling against the nape of her neck, _hey, Dee, do you want to hear a song I’ve been working on?_ )  

“Studying to be a teacher,” she says, just as quietly, every muscle in her body poised to flee.

“Oh, that’s really cool!” Charlie says; just like that, the tension drains out of her.

“Really?”

“Well, yeah,” Charlie says, confused. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I- Yeah, I guess.” She pauses and says, “Hey, I’m walking home. I could give you a lift to work? If you want?”

 His answering smile is wide, crinkling at the corner of his eyes. “Yeah! Yeah, that’d be great.”

 So Charlie falls into step besides her, and they leave the campus together. The sun is shining and the wind is crisp, and Dee is smiling too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie starts his classes. Also, the waitress is kind of a bitch. Who knew?

Charlie Kelly doesn’t understand a lot of things: he doesn’t understand why Frank won’t just get the paternity test. He doesn’t understand why Mac won’t just come out already. He doesn’t understand why there’s always white noise in his head, angry and crackling, and why only drugs make it go away.

 Here’s what Charlie Kelly  _ does _ understand: He understands the importance of doing a good job. He understands how to pass a health inspector’s most intensive investigation. He understands how the right sounds can create music, and why specific sounds can make  _ great  _ music.

 Dee Reynolds is someone that fits into both categories at once; knowable, and unknowable. Charlie understands why Dee is the way she is, all prickly and uncertain, but Charlie doesn’t understand why he feels safe around her. Charlie understands her desire for more, but he doesn’t understand why she’s embarrassed by it.

 What Charlie does know for  _ certain _ is that his heart is tight when it’s just the two of them. That even though they both agreed that night had been a mistake, it still doesn’t  _ feel _ like a mistake two years later. It felt scary, but in a  _ good _ way. Not the kind of scary like stepping past Philadelphia’s borders into the unknown; not the kind of scary like the inevitability of his bedroom door opening at night. 

 It felt like riding a bike at sunset, like seeing a rare snow goose in his backyard, like finding something shiny in the trash. Charlie isn’t a smart man, and he knows he’s worthless, but that day with Dee had made him feel-  _ something _ . Something he can’t put into words, but he knows he could put into music. This feeling, this inadequacy in his language, pisses him  _ off _ .

 When Charlie had come home that day after almost drowning, all he could think of was the books of hieroglyphic lyrics he had stuffed in the corner where he keeps his things. He loves music, loves writing it, but he thinks of those tattered notebooks and he wishes he could write it better, wishes he could put what he thinks and feels into words so other people understand.

 So he goes to Frank and says, “Will you lend me some money?”

 Frank peers at him over one of his old porno magazines. “Money? What for?”

 Charlie shrugs as if this is no big deal. “I want to take classes. To learn how to read and write, and shit.”

 Frank hums. “You wanna impress some broad? Is this about the waitress?”

 (He hasn’t thought about the waitress in a long time, but that’s something he tucks away to think about later.)

 “No,” Charlie says defensively. “I wanna write music, okay?”

 Frank turns a page. “You already write music.”

 “You know what I mean,” Charlie says in frustration. “I wanna write it  _ better _ .”

 “Self-improvement, huh?” Frank says, closing his magazine. “Yeah, sure, why not. Tell me how much you need.”

 So Charlie does, which is how he comes to find himself in a classroom full of adults in a similar predicament only a few weeks later. He’s wearing a clean, if old, t-shirt and he washed the sewer muck off his shoes and no-one is teasing him, or saying stupid shit about being illiterate, even if the textbook in front of him seems like a joke. His knee is trembling; his hands are fisted in his lap.

 The teacher, an old guy named Pete Surry, is patient and kind. He has a pair of glasses that look like bottle-caps, and when he talks them through what the classes entail, Charlie thinks he looks like how a father should look; tall, a bit chubby, with greying hair and a really thick mustache. Pete looks like he’s stepped from a 50’s movie, and it’s kinda disappointing he doesn’t speak like it. 

 “The English language is really tricky,” Pete tells them calmly. He’s leaning against his desk, hands clasped in front of him. “It’s full of contradictions, exceptions, loan words… So please, keep this in mind. It’s not an easy language. But if you already speak it, then you’re halfway there, really. You have the sounds; you just need to match it to the words. And that’s where I come in.”

 Charlie likes this idea, like matching lyrics to a song, and his knee slows down to a stop.

 “Now, I know the textbook seems pretty counterproductive,” Pete continues. “We’re all adults here, so I can tell you that I think it’s a little silly as well. But, after a few classes, I promise it will be really useful. For now, the important part is us learning the building blocks of written English.”

 And so, Charlie begins learning the alphabet. Properly, this time, no back to front letters and shaky strokes. Charlie knows how to build robots; Charlie knows how to fix a toilet. But the alphabet challenges him, physically exhausts him. Why aren’t these letters consistent? Why are they so hard to write? Why is it he can play a piano, but using a pencil is so difficult?

 Pete tells them to practice writing the alphabet every day, capital and lower-case, so when Charlie gets home after his classes and before he goes to the bar (all of his classes are in the morning), that’s exactly what he does.

 Frank wakes up to find him hunched over the desk, writing letter after letter on scrap paper. “Jesus,” Frank says, making a coffee. “It’s like the twins just starting pre-k all over again.”

 “Shut up, man,” Charlie mutters.  

 Frank raises his hands. “Hey, I’m not shitting on you. Takes me back, is all. Kinda cute, actually. Wait til the Gang sees this. Maybe we could put it on the fridge.”

 Frank sounds earnest, shockingly so, and Charlie looks up at him in surprise- and panic. “You can’t tell them I’m doing this, dude.”

 “Why not?”

 “Because- you- you know how they are! Dennis will never shut up about it,” Charlie says, and pulls a vain sort of face and a vainer sort of voice. “Oh, how  _ quaint _ , Charlie, look at you, dotting your x’s and crossing your w’s-”

 “You don’t dot your x’s, Charlie,” Frank says, but he doesn’t bring it up again , and Charlie’s secret remains between them until Dee is holding his textbook out of his reach and looking incredulous, embarrassed, surprised.

 Charlie remembers that day crafting def rhymes, remembers that night, her scent on his body and her fingers tangled in his, and before he knows what he’s doing, he tells her quietly, “I’m, uh, taking an adult reading class.”

 “No shit,” Dee says, having clearly read the textbook’s cover. But her eyes are soft, her brows furrowed. Charlie waits for her to take the opportunity to rub his stupidity in his face. God knows he’s called her  _ bird _ enough to have earnt it, and he braces himself.

 But Dee, surprising, unknowable Dee, offers him the book back. Her eyes are so blue and her hair is so golden and she holds the book out like a peace offering. He takes it, and then when he stands up, hesitantly offers her his hand. Charlie sees how Dee glances at his hand, then at his face, but she slides her fingers into his grip. Soft, and cool, and grounding, and his heart is tight again. 

 “So, uh, what about you?” Charlie asks, if only because he doesn’t know what else to say, and his curiosity is genuine. “Why are  _ you _ here?” 

 “Studying to be a teacher,” she says quietly, and he couldn’t say why, but that makes him  _ happy _ for her. Charlie thinks she’s holding herself like the stray cats he sees in the alleys, tense and prideful, waiting to fight or flee.

So Charlie says, “Oh, that’s really cool!” and he means it.

“Really?”

“Well, yeah,” Charlie says, confused. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I- Yeah, I guess.” She pauses and says, “Hey, I’m walking home. I could give you a lift to work? If you want?”

 “Yeah! Yeah, that’d be great,” he says, smile widening, and they walk back to her apartment together.

 “So, what will you teach?” Charlie asks after a few silent blocks. “Theatre?”

 “Yeah, I mean. It’s the only thing I have some idea about,” Dee confesses. “Even if I’m not very good at it.”

 Charlies bites back a harsh comment. She’s being nice, and the wind is playing with her hair, and she looks a little less… sharp, than usual. The same kind of not-sharp she had been on top of him, the same kind of not-sharp she had been with her fingers interlaced with his, sweat running down their chests.

 “Well,” Charlie says instead, “So what? I mean, you don’t have to be a chef to tell if something tastes bad, right?”

 Dee blinks, and her mouth curls upwards. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

 “Fuck chefs,” Charlie exclaims off-handedly, and Dee laughs, but her smile thins.

 “Hey, Charlie,” she says.

 “Yeah?”

 “You aren’t gonna tell them, right?”

 “Tell who what?”

 She rolls her eyes. “About me taking classes,” she says.

 Charlie looks at her calculatingly. “Are you gonna tell them about  _ me _ taking classes?” 

 She looks back at him, just as calculatingly. “I won’t, if you won’t,” she says eventually.

 “Deal,” Charlie says, and just like that, Charlie and Dee are keeping two secrets instead of one.

 

-

 

After this meeting, things seem… better. Charlie couldn’t explain it in words ( _ yet _ , he tells himself) but he can in sound. It’s like the white noise of day to day life is softer, more ambient. He’s scrubbing a urinal and he doesn’t feel the urge to inhale the bleach fumes until the room spins; he’s loading up a new keg and doesn’t mind when Dennis snaps at him to  _ hurry up _ even though there’s next to no-one around. Even writing the alphabet is a little less frustrating, and Charlie finds himself distracted by letters on labels, in signs, paying more attention to them than he usually does. The letters shudder and jumble but they’re getting easier to pick out. There’s a ‘C’, for Charlie and a… Charlie knows this one, a ‘D’, for-

 Charlie laughs, and Mac looks at him from the other side of the room.

 “What is it?” Mac asks. “Is that weird shaped sweat mark on the booth seat again?”

 “Uh,” Charlie says quickly, “No, uh- it’s nothing.”

 Mac turns back to his glass and Charlie to his broom, but he keeps glancing up at the sign. 

 (‘D’ for Dee.)

 That night, he draws several loopy ‘D’s. He prefers upper case to lower usually, but he likes the lower case ‘D’. It even looks like a musical note. 

 “Y’letters are looking good,” Frank says, peering over- or rather, around- Charlie’s shoulder.

 “Yeah,” Charlie says, holding them up. “Not too bad, right?”

 A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Charlie may struggle with other letters, but these seven are easy; each has a corresponding note, and they chime in his head as he writes them out. 

 Maybe this won’t be so hard as everyone says.

 

-

 

Dee calls him out of the blue a couple of nights later. He picks up immediately; after last time, he’s changed her name on her phone to a musical note.

 (It occurs to him again how long it’s been since he tried to call the waitress, that he can’t remember the last time he put vitamins in her shampoo, that he hasn’t walked down her street for almost months.)

 “ _ Hey,” _ she says.  _ “I was wondering, if. Uh. You wanted a lift again to work tomorrow?” _

__ Charlie blinks. Even as his heart does that strange tightening thing in his chest, he’s confused. “Is your toilet broken again?” He asks.

 “ _ No,” _ she says, and her voice is high pitched in its defensiveness. “ _ I just- fine, forget it, Christ-” _

__ “Wait, were you being  _ nice _ ?” Charlie says in surprise.

 Silence. And then: “ _ No. Maybe. Is that so hard to believe? Jesus. See you later, boner.” _

__ “Wait!” Charlie says quickly, before she hangs up. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

 “ _ Meet you at the gates?” _

__ “Sure, yeah.”

 “ _ Cool. See you later,” _ she says, and hangs up.

 Charlie stares at his phone. Weird. Cool, though. Saves him a bus fare.

 (Charlie thinks of how beautiful Dee had looked beneath him, hair tangled and her shirt running up on her ribs, of how easy it had been. Sex for him is something he has to carefully navigate if he doesn’t want to think about certain things best left alone, like crossing a rickety wooden bridge and trying not to look down through the gaps. But with Dee, it had been like walking on solid ground, nothing to even look down  _ for _ , their def poetry slams still circling through his mind and the ever anxious buzz in his head quiet, silenced by her, her,  _ her. _ )

  
  


-

 

The next day, they begin learning how to write sound groups. This is a little more difficult, because some of these sound groups share the same spelling, and makes no sense to Charlie, like pretending a flat and a sharp sound the same. He can write basic words, but he spells them according to how they should sound, which isn’t always right. He has to correct years of habitual mistakes. It’s  _ bullshit _ .

 “So, we have ‘ea’, which could be as in ‘cheap’, or ‘deaf’,” Pete says, writing the letters on the whiteboard. Charlie’s knee starts jiggling as he tries to hold them in focus, but they’re jumping around on the board like grasshoppers.

 “But it’s an ‘e’ sound,” Charlie finds himself unable to hold back from saying, interrupting Pete. Pete, however, merely gives him a rueful smile.

 “Right you are, Charlie,” he says, and writes  _ e  _ and  _ ee _ and  _ ie _ on the board too, where they join the moving letters. “The ‘e’ sound can also be written like this too, in some words.”

 “Are you shitting me?” Charlie says, horrified, and Pete, among several other classmates, laughs.

 “Unfortunately not,” Pete admits. Charlie runs a hand down his face, how is he going to remember all of these stupid combinations?

 He complains about this to Dee after class as they walk back to her apartment, and Dee just shrugs.

 “That’s how it is,” she says. “You can’t do anything about it.”

 “It’s stupid, is how it is,” Charlie grumbles, kicking at an empty beer can on the footpath; it sails high into the sky and lands in someone’s backyard, and Dee laughs as a dog starts barking.

 “Dumbass dog,” she says, up on her tiptoes to see over the fence. “Wow, get a load of this guy. He looks like Frank.”

 “I wanna see,” Charlie says immediately, hooking a foot onto the wooden panel running horizontal to the ground and hoisting himself up. At this height, he’s just a little bit taller than Dee, which is strange. The slope of her cheekbones are different? No, it’s something else. Something he can’t express with words  _ or _ music. 

 “There he is,” Dee says, motioning with a jerk of her head. Her eyes barely clear the fence, but he follows her line of sight to the ugliest little pug dog he’s ever seen in his life.

 “You’re an ugly son of a bitch, aren’t you,” Dee coos, and Charlie laughs as the dog bares its tiny teeth and starts yapping, jumping to and fro. Between the bug eyes and the wild fur and the fat gut hanging off it….

 “God, it  _ is _ Frank,” Charlie says in delight.

 “Yeah, but  _ fatter _ ,” Dee says. 

 “Hey, take a photo of me with him,” Charlie says, fumbling in his pocket for his old Iphone 4. He likes photos; likes how they capture things you can’t convey in words alone. His phone is full of them.

 Dee raises a brow, but takes out her phone, which is in much better shape.

 “Your phone’s shit,” she informs him.

 “Yeah, fair,” he says, and she takes a selfie of the two of them with the yapping little pug in the background. She texts him the photo and he opens it as he lowers himself from the fence. Charlie is grinning, pointing over his head at the dog, while Dee pulls a stupid expression. They both look ridiculous but Charlie likes how he and Dee look together, how the sun is hitting their faces.

 “Come on, numbnut,” Dee says, and he looks up. “I’ve got study to do.”

 “Yeah, yeah,” he says, putting his phone in his pocket and following her. 

 (He’ll delete the photo after he shows it to Frank, just in case Dennis or Mac get a hold of his phone and give him hell.)

 (He doesn’t).

 

-

 

Charlie decides that writing is harder than he thought. But he keeps going, because that’s what Charlie  _ does _ . He’s written a musical from scratch, he’s built robots from scrap. He can learn how to write twenty five different letters and all of their stupid combinations as well. The alphabet song becomes stuck in the back of his head. He’ll be mopping the bathrooms and humming it, each letter in the back of his head in time with the song,  _ ay bee see Dee ee eff gee _ -

 “ _ Charlie. _ ”

 Charlie blinks, looks up; Dennis is standing in front of him, arms crossed and looking impatient.

 “Jesus Christ, what’s got you so distracted?” Dennis says, and shoves past Charlie so he can piss. 

 “I dunno, man,” Charlie says, casting about for something believable, and decides to go with something not exactly a lie. “I found this huge-ass rat corpse last night on my sewer walk. I’m thinking about tacks- taxi-”

 “Taxidermy,” Dennis says for him. “And also,  _ gross _ , dude. You gotta stop going down there.”

 “No way, man,” Charlie says, dipping the mop back in the bucket. “It’s like a secret little treasure cave down there.”

 “One man’s trash or whatever,” Dennis says, zipping up. He flushes the urinal. Charlie continues mopping.

 “Oh, and Charlie,” Dennis says a good twenty seconds later, startling him; he thought Dennis had left. “Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

 Every hair on Charlie’s body stands on end, and he stares at Dennis, who is looking at him with cold, unimpressed. 

 “Notice what, dude?” he says, and somehow his voice doesn’t crack.

 Dennis raises an eyebrows, points. “That one needs a new urinal cake, come on, dude. As if I wouldn’t notice you hadn’t replaced them for weeks.”

 “Oh, right, yeah. Sorry,” Charlie says quickly, and Dennis shakes his head before he leaves.

_Phew_ , he thinks, taking a new cake out. He squints at the small print on the label. _U… r… i… n… e…_ _yewrine,_ oh, cool. _Urine_. 

 Charlie smiles to himself.

 

-

 

The next week, Charlie and Dee walk home together four times, and Charlie doesn’t know how or why this is happening, but it’s nice. They’ve known each other for almost… how long?

 “Nearly twenty four years,” Dee says when he asks her, and he blinks at her in surprise. She looks just as surprised, the sheer length of time weighty in the air. Twenty four years and it’s only now they’ve really started hanging out together properly.

 (Well, that’s not true. They used to hang out alone more often, back before Dennis really started looking at Dee like someone dragging him down, and they hung out that time they missed the boat, didn’t they? One of the most peaceful days of his life.)

 “Christ, we’re old,” Dee grumbles.

 “Dennis says age is just a number,” Charlie says, and they both look at eachother with the same grimace-grin. 

 “Dennis still tells people he’s thirty two,” Dee says, and Charlie snorts, hoisting his backpack up on his shoulders. 

 “Look, Frank’s old, right?” Charlie muses. “But look at him. He’s living the fucking life. I mean, he’s a millionaire, and he’s had more sex than any of us combined, except Dennis, maybe.”

 Dee looks defensive. “I could have had a lot of sex you guys just don’t know about. I could be  _ drowning _ in dick.”

 Even Charlie gives her a look, he thinks to himself,  _ I hope not _ , but that’s a weird thought to have, Charlie?  _ We fucked once, it was a mistake, it was two years ago- _

__ “And  _ please _ don’t make me think about Frank having sex on that grotty fucking futon,” Dee says. 

 “He has a towel he lays down,” Charlie begins indignantly, and Dee’s entire face scrunches up. It should be ugly as shit but it’s somehow cute, so he drops it. 

 (They wash the towel like once a month, it’s fine.)

 

-

 

Things start to change at work, as well. They may walk in a few minutes apart to save face, but Dee will smile at him if they happen to pass, and maybe Charlie gives the women’s toilets an extra scrub more than usual. Dee puts an extra slice of lemon in his beer. Charlie clears out the soda lines preemptively.

 The biggest change is that while Charlie rarely took active joy in joining in with the guys’ Dee Roasts, he also rarely felt  _ bad _ about it. Survival of the fittest; Charlie wasn’t called Dirt-grub for nothing. You do what you have to do to stay in the pack, to stay safe in numbers, to avoid being singled out. Anything is better than being alone.

 Now, when Dennis calles Dee a stupid bitch, Charlie feels… uneasy. He still laughs, but he finds he doesn’t rush to join in like he usually would. The words feel heavy in his mouth, like when he sniffs too much paint and his tongue becomes too big for his teeth. 

 So Charlie busies himself. The bar used to be  a safe place;  _ we can hide from the world at the bar _ , he said once, and he had meant it, but now he’s hiding from the world  _ within _ the bar little by little as well; in the alley, in the cubicles, behind his mop and bucket.

 In fact, he finds that his new sanctuary is, of all places, the classroom. 

 Pete, Charlie decides, is super chill. He doesn’t look at Charlie like an idiot, and he drives a beat up little black Volkswagen Beetle, and, Charlie notices, he wears these funky socks? By all rights, he should be a nerdy old dude wearing weird footwear. But he isn’t.

 “Hey, Charlie,” Pete says as Charlie comes in, just like usual; a smile on his face and a hand in greeting.  

 “Hey, man,” Charlie says, sitting in the front. He gets less distracted when there aren’t people in front of him, and it’s easier to read Pete’s writing up close to the board, so he tries to get there a little earlier, get a good seat. “What socks you got today?”

 Pete pulls up his trouser leg to reveal pink socks with green cat silhouettes.

 “Nice,” Charlie grins. 

 “You can thank my husband for that,” Pete says cheerfully, shuffling through his bag.

 “You’re gay?” Charlie says in surprise.

 “Born and bred,” Pete says, and then looks at Charlie. “That a problem, son?”

 “No, no,” Charlie says very,  _ very _ quickly. “One of my best friends is gay. I just, haven’t met any  _ old _ gay dudes before, I guess. It’s cool.”

 “I like to think I’m pretty cool,” Pete nods. “How’d you find the homework?”

 Charlie proudly pulls out some tattered note paper, and shows Pete what he’s written on it.

 “ _ My name is Charlie, _ ” Pete reads aloud,  _ “And I can play piano. _ ”

 It had taken him several times to get it right, messing up the letters and forgetting to capitalise the ‘I’, the letters scrambling themselves even as he wrote them. He wrote the sentence over and over until the motion was smooth and he didn’t misspell anything, and he showed it to Frank who had given him a thumbs up, not made a single comment about the letters looking ugly or childish, and when Pete looks up at him with a grin, Charlie can feel how his answering smile beams.

 “This is great, Charlie, nice work,” Pete says, handing it back to him. “You play piano?” 

 “Yeah,” Charlie says, carefully folding the paper up and sliding it into his textbook. 

 “You in a band or anything?”

 Charlie shakes his head. “No one I know plays any instruments,” he shrugs. 

 “That’s a shame,” Pete says, as the last of the class files in. “I play the drums, but it’s more fun with other people, right?”

 Pete gets up from his desk to start the lesson, and Charlie is looking at him with fresh eyes,  _ Pete’s a musician, just like me _ , and the white noise gets a little bit lighter again.

 

-

 

Without even realising it, after class, Charlie is waiting at the usual spot for Dee; a bench just a few meters away from the exit, watching a couple of American Robins poking around for worms in the grass, flapping their wings and trilling. 

 (Birds are really cool. He never really got the whole  _ bird _ insult.)

 Ten minutes pass; Dee still doesn’t show. He digs his phone out and calls her, and she picks up after a couple of rings.

 “Hey, where are you?” Charlie asks impatiently.

 “ _ Uh, I’m at home?” _

__ “I thought we were walking back to yours?” Charlie says, and even as he says it, he realises they never actually made plans to do it. 

 Dee pauses. “ _ No, my class finished early?” _

__ “No, I- guess I just thought, since, y’know. Don’t worry about it.”

Another pause, where Charlie feels acutely stupid, and… disappointed?

 “ _ I mean, I can still give you a lift, or whatever,” _ Dee says slowly.

 “Yeah!” Charlie says with an eagerness that takes him aback. “Yeah, uh, see you soon?”

 “ _ Sure _ ,” she says. “ _ You want a beer?” _

__ “Yes, holy shit, Dee, you’re amazing,” he says without thinking, a beer is  _ exactly _ what he could go for, and there’s a loaded pause-

 (Holy shit, Dee, you’re amazing _ , he says as he slides home in her, warmth singing in every inch of him, his face in her throat, and he wonders if when he lifts his head all of his freckles will have pressed onto her, it feels like they’re burning alive and he doesn’t want it to stop-) _

__ _ You’re goddamn right I am,” _ she says. “ _ Pick up some food on the way though and I’ll call it even.” _

__

-

 

Charlie knocks on her door and Dee opens it in a ratty hoodie and sweatpant shorts, and there’s that tug in his chest. Even her knees aren’t too horrifying.

 “I bought some pizza,” Charlie says, “But I kinda got distracted by this really big raccoon on the way here so it’s  _ kinda _ cold...”

 “I found this beer in my bathroom cabinet,” Dee says in response, holding up a big bottle of some weird-ass looking German beer. “I think my cat pissed on the bottle.”

 “Wait, you haven’t had a cat for  _ ages _ ,” Charlie says. “That makes that bottle, like… vintage, right?”

 “Yeah, fancy,” Dee says, and steps aside to let him in. 

 They sit at her table, the sun coming through the window, and Charlie gets grease on the shirt Frank lent him as he gulps down the pizza and Dee spills her glass of vintage beer when she’s lunging to get the last slice before him.

 (Dee gets him a napkin; he shows her how to get dark lager out of carpet.  _ We’re like one whole functioning person _ , he says off-handedly, and she snorts so hard she starts coughing.)

 

-

 

Their friendship doesn’t go entirely unnoticed. Mac makes off hand comments about how Charlie seems less  _ weird _ than usual; Dennis makes pointed remarks about Dee being  _ happier _ than usual. Mac’s a dumbass, so Charlie isn’t worried about him, but he  _ is _ worried about Dennis, with his narrowed eyes and thin lips. 

 Charlie… has complicated feelings towards Dennis. Dennis is the glue that holds the gang together; Dennis is the one who made the bar happen; Dennis is the one who gives Charlie what little income he has.

 (But Dennis is angry, Dennis is dangerous, Dennis thinks that def poetry is  _ stupid _ .)

 Dennis is the alpha wolf of their pack, and if Dee is a bird,  _ prey _ , then Charlie is the mutt tagging along. Charlie loves Mac, but Mac is pretty stupid, and he doesn’t think Mac would side with Charlie if push came to shove. 

 (He’s seen how Mac looks at Dennis, it’s so stupidly  _ obvious _ , and part of Charlie feels bad for Mac because of it.)

 So Charlie shrinks himself even more than usual around Dennis, plays the good janitor, focuses on Charlie Work like nothing else, makes himself small, like it’s highschool all over again, and when it gets quiet or when the fumes get a little too strong he goes and sits up on the roof.

 Dee’s already up there when he opens the door, smoking a cigarette and leaning against the wall.

 “Dennis was being a cunt,” she says by way of explanation, offers him a cigarette. He takes it, lights it with the shitty little Bic lighter she offers him. It’s been a while since Charlie smoked a cigarette, and it sears into his throat.

 “He’s always being a cunt,” Charlie says, and Dee laughs. “How was your class last night?”

 She shrugs. “It was a class. Ingrid and I got sushi after, which was weirdly up market, I guess.”

 “Ingrid?”

 “Oh, shit, I haven’t told you about this?” Dee says, surprised. “Fucking. Fatty Magoo is in my course. She wants to teach fashion design or something.”

 “No shit?” Charlie says in surprise. “What, are you two like… friends, now, or?”   
 “I guess,” Dee shrugs. “Mainly I just wanted her to help me with homework.”

 “Fatty Magoo and the Aluminum Monster, back together,” Charlie says. “Wild.”

 “She isn’t fat, and I never have to wear that fuck-ugly thing again,” Dee says, taking a long drag from her cigarette. “And I wouldn’t say we’re  _ friends _ .”

 “Why not?” Charlie asks her. 

 “Because we just aren’t,” Dee says. “She’s too good for me apparently, or whatever.”

 “So she’s a bitch,” Charlie says blithely. “Yeah, I guess she was pretty up herself at the reunion.”

 Dee huffs a sigh; smoke swirls out of her nostrils, pretty patterns, and she says with great reluctance, “I mean, she isn’t  _ that _ bad.”

 Charlie shrugs. “Alright.”

 “But she  _ is _ kind of a bitch,” Dee continues.

 “Okay,” Charlie says, bemused, and Dee grimaces.  

 “I better head back down there before Dennis has a goddamn fit,” she sighs, dropping the cigarette and grinding it out beneath her boot. 

 “Later,” Charlie says, but the rooftop is a little lonely without her, and before his cigarette is even halfway finished he goes back inside.

 

-

 

After his night class that week, Dee isn’t there of course, and Charlie meanders down the streets alone. It’s almost an hour’s walk back to his and Frank’s, but the bus is always full of loud teenagers this time of night and he likes the cool air on his face, likes taking detours. He knows South Philly like the back of his hand, knows which bakeries toss out their day old goods, knows which pizza places will give you a free slice if you put dirt on your face and mumble under your breath. Charlie goes from store to store, getting several cumulative free meals.

 An hour walk turns to several, and Charlie comes to the waitress’s street. He sits on the curb a couple of houses away from hers, thoughtfully chewing on his cinnamon roll.

Her apartment window is lit up behind the curtain, and he would usually circle around the back to see if she’s left her kitchen window exposed. Sometimes he can watch her washing her dishes.

 But tonight, he just sits there, thinking about that night they spent together on the beach. He still has that green piece of seaglass in a little box, right next to his lyric books, can remember acutely the confusion of her rejecting him. For Charlie, drugs have only ever amplified his feelings; his annoyance turning to range, his amusement turning to glee, so doesn’t mean the waitress had just secretly felt the same way the entire time?

 ( _ Dee didn’t need to be high to kiss you, _ some small voice in him says, and that’s a thought that makes his heart tight and his eyebrows crease, that’s a thought he can’t do anything with because that night was a mistake, both of them  _ agreed it was a mistake _ , and if Dennis and Mac ever found out... _ ) _

 These thoughts don’t cause him as much trouble as usual, but he isn’t sure  _ why _ . He’s loved the waitress ever since he met her, but if he loves her, why isn’t he walking down her street every day like he used to? Why isn’t he breaking into her apartment and making sure her fridge is stocked?  These used to be habit, and he tries to think when this stopped; roughly around the same time he and Dee spent that night together.

 Weird.  _ Super  _ weird.

 Charlie finishes his cinnamon bun and stands up, stuffing the rest of the pastries and rolls in his bag for later, still looking up at the waitress’s window. On a whim, he’s picking up a pebble and throwing it at her window. 

 “Hey!” he calls. “ _ Hey _ , waitress!”

 The curtains rustle, and the waitress’s face appears at the window. She looks extremely unimpressed, and her hair is shorter. Makes her face look kind of round. She’s not as pretty as he remembers.

 Charlie motions for her to open her window, and she does. 

 “What do you fucking want, Charlie,” she says flatly.

 “It’s been a while,” he shrugs. “I was in the area, thought I’d say hi.”

 “I  _ know _ it’s been a while, Charlie,” she says, rubbing her face. “I thought I had finally gotten rid of you.”

 “I kinda forgot about you,” he admits. “I’ve been really busy.”

 “Good. Be busier,” she tells him, and goes to close her windows.

 “Wait, wait- I’ve started learning how to read-”

 “Cool, great,” she says, but he frowns, because she isn’t smiling like Dee was when he showed her his homework, the waitress doesn’t  _ mean _ it.  

 “What’s wrong?” he asks, surprised.

 “Charlie,” she says sweetly. “I don’t give a shit about your classes, okay? Don’t make me increase the restraining order again. Now can you  _ please _ let me eat drink in peace?”

 “Fine, fine,” he says, and she slams the window shut, yanks the curtain closed, and then, just like he threw the rock at the window without knowing why, he calls Dee. 

 “Hey,” he says when she picks up.

 “ _ Hey,” _ Dee says. “ _ What’s up?” _

__ “The waitress is a  _ bitch _ ,” he says, but the sharp hurt of refusal isn’t really that sharp, like it’s skidding off old calluses. “I told her I was learning to read and she didn’t give a shit.”

 “ _ I mean, I could have told you that,” _ Dee says.

 “I dunno, I thought she’d at least be- happy for me, I guess,” Charlie says.

 “ _ She hates your guts, Charlie,” _ Dee reminds him.

 “Yeah,” Charlie says. “That makes sense. I kinda guess she does.”

 “ _ You gonna cry about it?”  _ Dee says, and while it’s said mockingly, it isn’t as sharp as it could be.

 “Fuck off,” he says indignantly, even as he smiles. 

 “ _ Yeah, whatever, pissbaby,”  _ Dee says. 

 “What are  _ you _ doing?” Charlie asks. “Drowning in dick?”

 “ _ Not tonight _ ,” she says. “ _ Watching some dumbass baking show.” _

__ “Hey,” Charlie says slowly. “I have like, a bag full of donuts and shit. Mind if I come over? I’m just walking back from class and I can’t eat them all myself.”

 “ _ Sure,”  _ Dee says, and he hears her sip from something- probably a beer bottle. “ _ Why not?” _

 

-

 

Charlie wakes up with gritty fingers and fuzzy teeth, and it takes him a few seconds to figure out why he isn’t back home, on the futon, surrounded by Frank’s farts. Dee is snoring on the other side of the couch, half a bagel in her hand, and her feet are on his lap. They’re fine boned, long, her toenails covered in chipped blue nail polish, and so  _ light _ . 

 Dee is like a bird but in ways that Mac and Dennis don’t understand. Dee’s flighty, delicate but strong; thin bones and pointy and bright plumage. He watched a documentary about birds once. One of them, called a shrike, would drop its prey on thorns to kill it and leave then leave the corpse for when it was hungry later. It was innocent looking, with white and golden feathers and big eyes, and Charlie thinks this is what Dee would be, as a bird; pretty and  _ sharp _ .

 But right now, she’s drooling a little, and her hoodie has ridden up on her stomach. He can see the slope of her hip muscles, the little furrow of her belly button. His hand tightens around her calf, and he takes a deep breath.

 The feel of her skin against his fingers and he can’t stop thinking about That Night, as he’s come to call it. Can’t stop thinking about how they fit together. Dee is the only other person besides Frank whose touch Charlie doesn’t mind, Charlie realises. That, and he really needs to piss.

 He lifts up her legs and gets up, and she groans, cracks open an eye.

 “What the fuck,” she mutters.

 “I need to piss,” he says.

 “Well, go fucking piss,” she mumbles, turning so that her face is smushed into the couch’s arm. 

 “You look like an idiot,” he grins, and she throws a pillow at him.

 

-

 

“There you are,” Frank says when he opens the door. “Were you out hunting for sewer treasure again?”

 “Nah,” Charlie says. He pulls a donut from his bag and tosses it to Frank, who catches it.

 “Varallo Brothers?” Frank says. “Nice. Anyway, what were you up to? I was keen to play some Nightcrawlers.”

 Charlie shrugs. While he and Dee hanging out is a secret kept for social survival, now it feels like… a good secret. That Dee yelling at some dude trying to bake a cake and spraying crumbs everywhere is a moment for him, and him alone. “I went and saw the waitress.”

 “Did you sleep on her front porch? I  _ told _ you, Charlie, broads only like that shit when you got money.”

 “I didn’t sleep on her fucking porch, Frank,” he says. “I just went to chat with her and she was kind of a bitch, actually.”

 “She was probably on the rag,” Frank says wisely, and that’s that.

 

-

 

“Hey, Charlie,” Pete says after class a few days later, just before Charlie steps out the door. He’s crossed the room to where Charlie was sitting. He’s way taller than Charlie up close, and something about this makes Charlie’s skin prickle, his shoulders hunch in; a childhood instinct.

 “Yeah?” Charlie says. 

 “I want to show you something,” Pete says, and something in Charlie lurches. The last person besides the two of them has filed out of the room, and Charlie’s hand fists in his bag. 

 “What is it?” he asks, and he’s already figuring out how hard he might have to hit Pete if he tries to touch him, whether or not he can climb out the window-

 But Pete is just pulling out his phone, typing on it, and he holds it out to Charlie, who stares at him and then the phone, uncomprehending.

 “Take a look,” Pete encourages, and Charlie takes the phone from him, very cautiously takes his eyes from Pete to look at the screen. It’s a video.

 “Go on,” Pete says, so Charlie, confused, hits the triangular play button. Music blares, and there’s three guys sitting in what looks like a garage, playing drums, a bass guitar, and a saxophone. Charlie peers closer; there’s Pete on the drums, bright socks in tow. They’re playing generic sort of 80’s music, and they sound pretty good, even if Charlie can hear the bass needs tuning.

 “I took a video a couple of days ago,” Pete says brightly. “Thought you might like it.”

 Charlie  _ does _ like it. He likes it a lot, actually. He’s always thought it would be cool to be in a band, or at least, have friends to jam with, who  _ get _ music like he does.

 “Nice,” Charlie says earnestly. “Do you guys have a name?”

 “Nah,” Pete says, as Charlie passes his phone back. “We just hang out every week, mess around, you know?”

 “That sounds really cool,” Charlie says. “How long have you played the drums for?”

 “Since I was a kid,” Pete says. “I was actually in a band for a little bit when I was in my twenties. We weren’t good enough to go anywhere with it, though.”

 “I wrote a musical once,” Charlie says, and Pete raises his eyebrows. He almost thinks Pete is mocking him, but his expression isn’t doubtful, it’s  _ impressed _ . 

 “What, seriously?”

 “Yeah,” Charlie says, and remembers his annoyance and embarrassment when the gang kept fucking it up. “I like writing music. It’s a hobby, or whatever.”

 “So is that why you’re here? Taking this class, I mean,” Pete says. 

 “Yeah,” Charlie says, forces a laugh. “It’s kinda hard to write lyrics when you’re illiterate.”

 Pete is giving him this appraising sort of look, like an x-ray, seeing through his bones, and Charlie wonders what he’s seeing. 

 “You’re a smart guy,” Pete says. “You know that, right, Charlie?”

 And Charlie doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just chuckles, makes a face, and Pete gives him this funny sort of smile. Charlie thinks it’s a little sad.

 “Well, I’ll see you next week,” he says to Charlie.

 “Yeah,” Charlie says. “See you next week.”

 (Charlie? Smart? He can barely read, it took him three hours to write a nine word sentence, but he carries himself with pride for the rest of the week.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't thank you guys enough for the warm welcome this fic has recieved!!! I was super hesitant to put it up in light of the Discourse in the fandom, so I'm feeling very warm hearted!!! Thank you so much!!!! I hope you liked this chapter.
> 
> Overall, I'm not really sure how I'm feeling about season thirteen beyond my distaste for the Retcon. I watched a couple of old episodes a few days ago and the characters are just so different..... it's fucking wild.... 
> 
> Anyway, from the next chapter, it'll be split between view points rather than A Dee Chapter, A Charlie Chapter, etc etc. 
> 
> I've planned 8 more chapters for this fic, and it'll be about 50K long all up! We'll also get more characters and stuff happening, now that everything's good and established!!!
> 
> I'm also on tumblr under the same name and Always up for chatting about Chardee/Always Sunny in general, so feel free to drop me an inbox!!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie has a bad day; Dee tries to be a better friend.

“Where’re you going, Charlie?” Frank says blearily, yawning as Charlie rolls off the couch, pulling on his jeans.

 “You know,” Charlie says vaguely. “Out.”

 “Pick me up a donut,” Frank mutters, going back to sleep, and Charlie gives him a fond sort of look as he shrugs on his cargo jacket, and then he’s out the door. 

 It’s a Sunday morning, and usually Charlie would rather inhale Yuck Puddle fumes than get up before twelve, but here he is. He wanders down the main strip, the late morning wind crisp on his face, stopping to read interesting posters and signs as he goes. The letters still jump and jerk but he can make them out easier, now.  _ East Road… Lily Avenue... _

 Nearly two months have passed since he and Dee first bumped into each other; several weeks of secret walks, of beers and the Great British Bake Off. First time they’ve hung out on a Sunday, though. 

 “Fuck, it’s chilly,” Dee says besides him, startling him. 

 “ _ Jesus, _ Dee,” he says.

 “Aw,” she says mockingly. “Did I scare you?”

 “Shut up,” Charlie says, shoves her gently. 

 “Come on, boner,” Dee says. “Let’s go buy a book.”

 

-

 

Goddamnit, it’s windy. Dee thought a t-shirt and jeans would be fine, but fuck Mother Nature, she supposes. 

 (Mothers have never done a thing for her, anyway.)

 Charlie’s nose and cheeks are a little red, but he’s got that army jacket of his on. He looks positively toasty. Since when does he feel the cold? God, it looks warm. 

 “I’m cold,” she says. 

 Charlie shrugs, but not meanly. “Sucks to be you, dude.”

 “Oh, my God,” she says, and laughs. “Your jacket, dumbass. Can I wear it? Please?”

 Charlie rolls his eyes. But he takes off the jacket, passes it to her. It’s got old stains and she can see several stitched up holes, but there’s a smell of beer and deodorant and general  _ musk _ to it that’s kinda nice, even as her nose wrinkles. She puts it on, and it’s so  _ warm _ .

 “Thanks,” she says, and means it, as she watches Charlie’s arms goose pimple, little bumps running all up those surprisingly strong arms of his.

 “You owe me a beer,” is all he says with a quirk of his lips. 

 “You’ve drunk  _ all _ of my beer,” Dee reminds him.

 “Well, uh, that’s not my problem,” Charlie says mockingly, and they bicker all the way down the street until she shoves him into the second hand bookstore. Books from wall to wall, bright covers and faded covers, peeling paint.

 “What kinda book are we looking for?” Charlie asks her, looking mildly overwhelmed.

 She shrugs. “What kinda book do you want?”   
 “Something on magnets, or birds, maybe,” Charlie says, which is exasperatingly useless. The two of them spend a good hour just browsing; Charlie pulling out books and reading out random passages in varying levels of fluency. His voice fills the shop; high pitched delight, dramatic readings, and Dee is laughing even as she shushes him.

 “ _ ‘Harry’s im- immedyit’-  _ isn’t this meant to be a fucking kid’s book, Dee?” Charlie says loudly.

 She leans over his shoulder. “‘ _ Harry’s immediate impression was of a large, glittering insect,’” _ she reads out, following the passage with her finger. 

 “What the hell’s a  _ Trelorney _ ,” Charlie asks.

 “ _ Trelawney, _ ” she says. “It’s just a name.”

 “Man, I’ll just stick to the movies,” Charlie says flippantly, but she can see the disappointment and frustration in the furrow of his brows, how his freckles shift on his cheeks, a roadmap to his feelings.  

 It makes her feel… protective. 

 “ _ Harry Potter _ is shit anyway,” she says, jamming the book back into the shelf, and she almost misses how Charlie smiles at her. “Maybe fiction just isn’t for you.”

 They head to the non-fiction area, and Charlie is immediately drawn by the small section on birds. Many of the books are far too technical; long Latin names and dry facts, but they happen upon a couple of interesting looking ones:  _ How to Speak Chicken _ , and  _ North American Bird Watching: a Guide for the Beginner _ . 

 Both are full of beautiful illustrations, and the style isn’t so academic, full of anecdotes and charming prose alongside facts and figures. Charlies picks a random page and reads it aloud, only stumbling on a few words, and he looks up at her with a breathless kind of delight, and Dee feels like the breath is being sucked out of her lungs,  _ what is this? _

__ After Charlie painstakingly pays for the books (second hand, they come to about ten dollars in total; Charlie pays almost entirely in coins of varying denominations) they kind of mill around the front of the store together, not quite sure what to do. They don’t bother opening the bar on a Sunday until early afternoon, so…

 “Lunch?” Dee suggests.

 “Yeah,” Charlie says. “Lunch.”

 Lunch consists of a one dollar hot dog from an acceptably grubby street vendor, eaten while sitting on a bench in a small but leafy park just around the corner. She’s still wearing his army jacket, and their knees are brushing. It’s comfortable, a comfortable she’s come to associate with these sort of times with him, unexpectant and easy. Charlie finishes his hot dog in a minute or two, and licks the mustard off his fingers as he flips through his new books. He flicks through the pages of the bird watching guide, mumbling words under his breath.

 Dee watches him. She’s known this man for more than two decades a thought that is both unsavoury in how old it makes her feel, but also… something. Something she can’t put into easy words.

 Dee was in that very bottom tier of popularity at school, a prison made by the bars criss crossing her own spine, trapped by a cage of her own biology until it was too late. Charlie, though, flitted between groups, amusing whoever needed to be amused to keep safe, entertainment and pity all wrapped into one little dirty teenager with manic eyes and freckles that seemed to multiply by the day. Charlie’s  _ likeable _ , an effortless sort of likeable that Dee strives for, a likeability that acts like waterproofing, life sliding off him like water from a duck’s back. But there’s a… not a hardness, not a toughness, a naive…  _ resilience _ to him. Charlie’s not like the rats he smashes, she thinks, but like the street dogs she sees every now and then; cheerful, smiling, battered and lively.

 Dee’s met many people in her life. But she’s never quite met someone like Charlie, someone so quick to anger and so quick to laugh, so stupid and so clever, so downtrodden and so joyous.

 “Oh,” Charlie says, startling her out of her thoughts. “Hey, look.”

 He points at a duck sitting in the pond nearby. 

 “It’s a duck,” Dee says flatly.

 “It’s a blue-winged teal,” Charlie says enthusiastically. “See the blue feathers on the bottom of the wing? They’re really rare, it’s probably heading down south for the winter. Soak up some rays, get a mojito…”

 Those green eyes of his are bright with excitement, and there’s that breath in her lungs sucking out of her again, a feeling she doesn’t know how to control.

 “You and your birds,” she grumbles, looking away. “What’s the deal with them, anyway?”

 Charlie shrugs. “I always wanted to fly, as a kid,” he says, eyes still on the blue-winged teal. His voice is light, the same sort of lightness when he talks about his childhood, that dismissive tightening of his eyes. He crosses his arms. 

 “Flying?” Dee says. “Lame. I always wanted to be a shape-shifter. Way cooler.”

 (She would dream of shifting her spine into place, stepping out of her brace, her eyes closer together and her boobs bigger and the ninth grade boys unable to look away from her-)

 Charlie doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then he shrugs. “Yeah. I guess.”

 “Flying’s pretty cool though,” Dee says, and she’s not too sure why, but it feels like the right thing to say. Charlie loosens up, his head tilting to face her.

 “How’s your assignment going?” he asks. Dee blinks in surprise, and then grimaces. 

 “Shitful,” she admits. “Educational policies are boring as  _ hell _ .”

 Charlie sits there and listens as she vents about her dumbass professor, and then bitches about how stupid referencing is. She can see in his eyes how he’s glazing over, and she can’t blame him, but he actually seems like he’s… trying.

 (Since when has anyone actually tried for her?)

-

 

 “Transcription,” Pete says. “I want you guys to transcribe something. One handwritten A4 page. Could be a scene from TV, could even be from an audiobook, or a song. Up to you.”

 After class, Charlie says to Pete, “A song? Any song?”

 Pete smiles at Charlie. “Any song, Charlie.”

 Charlie grins, and when he gets home, he heads straight to his little storage corner. He’s got a couple of hours before he needs to head to the bar, and he pulls out one of his lyric books. It’s one of the oldest ones, grotty and tattered, a notebook with bindings that have long since disintegrated. It’s held together with a rusted bulldog clip, a clip he has to leverage open with his body weight. The paper flutters to the tabletop, pages and pages of scrawled lyrics in a hieroglyphic shorthand Charlie developed as a child. There are backwards letters and symbols and bits of punctuation repurposed to act as words. Some of them are utterly unintelligible, even by his standards, but some he remembers as clearly as if he was back in his bedroom with the door with no lock, a torch in his hand and a pen in his fingers.

 He had been six when he found the mini Casio keyboard in the dumpster behind their apartment complex. A treasure, like finding a diamond ring in a sewer drain. Charlie was already the man of the house even back then, killing bugs and haphazardly figuring out by trial and error how to fix the plumbing as his mother counted carefully in the kitchen, flicking the lights on and off. He had somehow managed to fix the TV only a week ago; he supposed the mini keyboard couldn’t be much different.

 It took him months to fix it. One month to properly disassemble and clean it. One month to figure out that the power adaptor needed replacing, another month to find one he could jerry-rig to take its’ place. Two months to fix the inbuilt speakers. He can still remember pressing the keys for the first time; a perfect note wavering in the darkness of that room with a door that wouldn’t lock, no matter how much he wished it would.

 The majority of the songs in this lyric book are short, repetitive, songs he used to sing limited to chords he figured out by hours of pressing keys until certain things just sounded  _ right _ . But one song stands out among the others. Dedicated to his mom for her thirtieth birthday.

 Charlie’s never been able to buy a gift for someone. Never had the money. What gifts he’s given are made by his own hands, or traded, favors curried. His mother was the first person he ever wrote a song for. It’s three minutes long, more of a rambling poem than anything else, called  _ Number Mom _ . His code-writing is archaic, and it takes him a few minutes with certain words to trace back what it might be. He sips at a beer and writes down the song again in his own shorthand, humming the accompanying notes as he goes, and reads back over it before he heads out to Paddy’s. Humming all the way there, he decides he’s not only going to transcribe it, but rewrite it as well. His mom’s birthday is coming up in a couple of months; it’d be a good gift. Two birds, one stone, or whatever. Nice.

 

-

 

“This is bullshit,” Dee says. The librarian shushes her, and Dee gives her the finger when she turns her back. “I mean, if I have in text referencing already, why the hell do I need a bibliography as well?”

 “It’s not that hard,” Ingrid says patiently. “Just use Endnote.”

 “Use what now?”

 Ingrid sighs and pulls Dee’s computer over to her. “Didn’t you read  _ any _ of the student help brochures?”

 “I skimmed them,” Dee shrugs. “But it was all like… here’s where the library is… here’s where the toilet is…”

 “Amazing,” Ingrid says dryly. 

 “What are you doing?”

 “I’m installing an app that will auto-generate your sources for you,” Ingrid says. “Here- see, you just copy and paste the author in…”

 “Hey, Ingrid,” someone says. Dee looks up; one of mid twenties guys from their  _ Curriculum Development _ course. Dee has him pegged as nerdy and quiet, and it’s an accurate description.

 “Hey, Andy,” Ingrid smiles. “You wanna sit with us?”

 “Yeah,” he says. “Got here a little earlier than I expected.” He looks at Dee. “Uh, Dee, right?”

 Dee nods, and Jack sits down. Almost immediately, he and Ingrid start talking about their readings from the course, talking thick and fast about the class content, and Dee feels… left out. They use all this terminology like it’s nothing, rolling off their tongues, things she just barely gets the hang of. 

 (Is this how Charlie feels whenever he reads? It’s a sobering thought, one she’s never had.)

 As they talk, she looks down at her laptop, pretends she’s really busy doing important things and not feeling like she’s a third wheel. She plods away at generating her bibliography for a good fifteen minutes like this, resentment welling up in her, until-

 “-speaking of, Dee, what’d you think about the choices for the curriculum design assignment?”  

 Andy is talking to her, his expression friendly and open. Ingrid lightly kicks her in the shin. 

 “Uh,” Dee says, and opts for honesty if only because she knows she can’t bluff her way through this conversation. “I haven’t had a look yet, to be honest.”

 “God, fair enough,” Andy says. “It’s a mess. Me, I was thinking about doing the research based curriculum myself...”

 No judgement; just friendly camaraderie, and Dee really doesn’t know what to do with it. She’s so used to bluffing and side-stepping and being defensive, looking out for number one. She doesn’t know what to do with this friendly behaviour from a stranger. Ingrid at least bites back, can handle a bit of banter. But this kid, this  _ Andy _ , is just content to commiserate about the course, doesn’t lord his clearly superior knowledge over her. When he gets up to leave, he says to Dee, “Nice to chat, good luck with the assignment,” and she can tell he  _ means  _ it, isn’t being sarcastic or smug or rude.

 “Nice guy,” Ingrid says, watching him leave.  

 “Cradle snatcher,” Dee says jokingly, and Ingrid snorts. 

 “Sure,” Ingrid says, and there’s the air of a private joke there in how she says it. “How’s your report?”

 “Shit,” Dee sighs, running a hand down her face.

 Ingrid sighs, and holds out her hand. “Let me have a look,” Ingrid says. 

 “What, really?”

 “I’m not going to do any corrections,” Ingrid says warningly. “But I’ll give you some pointers.”

 “Thanks, Ingrid,” Dee says. 

 “Us girls have to stick together,” Ingrid shrugs in reply, and there’s that camaraderie again, camaraderie Dee is painfully, acutely aware that she doesn’t deserve.

 

-

 

“Jesus, Dee,” Dennis says, and Charlie looks at him in confusion as he clears the soda lines. Dennis is looking at Dee, who’s just closing the door behind her.

 “Too much blush, just like usual,” Dennis continues. “You look like-”

 “A flamingo!” Mac bursts out eagerly, and Dennis laughs. The two of them high five each other. Charlie busies himself behind the counter. 

 “Whatever, dumbass,” Dee says absently, heading straight through to dump her bag in the office.

 Yeah, Dee’s cheeks were a little red, but that’s just because it’s cold outside. Her nose is red as well. It’s kinda cute, actually. 

 Besides, flamingos only turn pink when they eat like, pink shrimp or whatever. And Dee doesn’t like shrimp. 

 But Charlie doesn’t say any of this, obviously. He can feel Dennis’s eyes on him, and he pretends to be super focused on clearing the line. Dee comes back out from the office, rolling up the sleeves of her shirt, checking the register before she goes to flick the fluro  _ open _ lights on in the window. She joins Charlie behind the bar, chopping up some limes in advance. She puts a bunch in an old tupperware container, and deliberately leaves some out for Charlie, who sneakily shoves a few in his mouth. 

 (What can he say? He likes a good lime. And Dee always cuts them thick, which is how a lime should be, Mac has no fucking clue what he’s talking about.)

 With his lime slice in tow, he goes about the rest of his duties for the night. There’s a few people, actually, it’s almost a full house for once. He sneaks a couple of more limes, has a sip of a beer when he’s alone in the basement checking the temperature isn’t too hot. He’s in and out throughout the night, doing whatever needs to be done. Mac is carding people, Dee is strapped with bartending and waitressing, Frank is handling the money and Dennis is chatting to a couple of barely legal women in the far corner table. Twins, of course. 

 Not for the first time, Charlie resents this even as he accepts it. That’s just how it is, that’s just how it’s always been. Never mind that Charlie (and Dee, he supposes) are the ones that actually keep the bar running, functionally. 

 Twins. Jesus. 

 “Is Dennis gonna try to bang twins again?” Frank says in mild interest as Charlie ducks behind the bar to get a rag and help with the dishwasher, which as always, is jammed shut.

 “I guess,” Charlie mutters, tongue between his teeth as he fumbles for the screwdriver in his belt. He’ll have to carefully loosen the door just a little, jiggle it in a very particular way. 

 “Well, it’s  _ my _ bar,” Frank says to no-one in particular. “If anyone’s gonna bang twins, it’s gonna be  _ me _ .”

 “Dude, there is  _ no  _ way those two chicks are even gonna look at you,” Charlie says, jiggling the door.

 “You wanna bet?”

 “No, man, I don’t wanna bet, I’m kinda busy here.”

 “Suit yourself,” Frank says, and then he’s gone.

 “Oh,  _ goddamnit,  _ Frank,” Dee says from nearby. “Sure, we have a full bar and we have no staff, but go and try and bang some college girls! That’s fine!”

 Charlie gingerly lowers the dishwasher door, and starts taking out fresh glasses.

 “Hey, Charlie,” Dee says. “Can you go grab the dirty glasses after you’re done? I need to stay here for the cash register because Frank is a horny old  _ asshole _ .”

 Surprisingly polite, for Dee. But Dee has actually been... nicer, lately. Saying  _ please _ and  _ thank you _ , words that sound kinda clumsy on her tongue and don’t fit with the angles of her.

 “Fuck off,” she snaps to a sleazy looking old guy as Charlie comes back with an armful of dirty glasses. 

 There she is. 

 They end up closing at one in the morning. Dennis disappears gleefully with the twins in tow; Frank follows soon after with a significantly older woman who, to be fair to Frank, looks significantly kinkier than the twins. 

 And then, Mac shoves the night’s work off on them to go “bang a really hot chick” that they somehow didn’t see but she was  _ definitely there, there the entire time _ . 

_ Dumbass twink _ , Charlie thinks, but pretends to believe him if only because Mac looks so desperate to be believed. So that leaves Charlie and Dee to close up.

 Charlie expects Dee to just leave as well, but she doesn’t. It’s not like she’s happy to be there; she counts the money up, disgruntledly gives them both their pay for the day straight from the til, and then grumbles the entire time she collects the glasses and wipes down the table top. Charlie sweeps and mops on automatic. Frank’s apparently gone back to the woman’s house, which is a nice change, he guesses, since Frank usually kicks him out of the apartment to bring his one night stands home. 

 But he’s never liked being alone. So he takes longer than he needs, humming to himself, trying to ignore the white noise in his head.

 “Charlie?” 

 He looks up. Dee has her bag in tow, her jacket back on. 

 “Yeah?”

 “I’m done.”

 Charlie nods. He’s feeling bummed out. Not sure why. But the white noise is buzzing in his ears, at the base of his neck. He has a few poppers shoved under the couch back home, and a bag of glue, that should do the trick. Take the edge off when Dee is gone and it’s just him in his apartment with the door that locks, he’s made  _ sure _ it locks-

 “Are you coming, or not?” Dee says.

 “What?”

 “I mean, if you  _ really _ want to walk all the way home, that’s fine, but I thought I could give you a lift.”

 “Do you want to hang out?” Charlie blurts. 

 “I have a morning class,” Dee says neutrally. 

 “Oh. Yeah. Duh,” Charlie says.

 “You can sleep on my couch if you want,” she offers. “You know, since I’m closer, and it’s pretty late already.”

  A lifeline, and he grasps for it, because even as he’s thirsting for glue and for the poppers, he knows it’ll make class a shitfest, reading is hard enough on only a few beers, and Dee’s couch is super soft-

 “Sure,” he says. “Thanks Dee.”

 Dee gives him this awkward, breezy sort of smile, like it’s no big deal, but she gives him an old blanket when he sinks into her sofa and the cushions smell of her perfume and he can hear her snoring in the other room, and the white noise is is barely there. 

 When he sleeps, he dreams of birds.

 

-

 

 When Dee gets up in the morning, Charlie is sprawled on her sofa, a leg kicked out from beneath his blanket, hair mussed, limbs tangled. The morning light sends his freckles into a stark contrast against his skin, his hair almost golden with the light, and Dee remembers the aftermath of that morning. Remembers waking up entangled in each other, his face buried in the crook of her neck, his arms tight around her, how she had been so scared at the easiness of it, her breath stealing away from her.

 And then, both of them blurting at the same time,  _ it was a mistake _ .

 A single unbidden thought, uninvited and terrifying: was it, though?

 She can’t think about this right now. She  _ won’t _ think about it. So she goes and makes some toast, leaves the leftovers for him. Dee wakes Charlie up, a little rougher than needed, maybe, shaking his shoulder. When he opens his eyes, rubbing at them with the heel of his palm, he gives her this sleepy sort of smile that she can’t think about.  _ Won’t _ think about.

 “Five minutes before we gotta go,” Dee says pointedly.

 “Good morning to you too,” Charlie mumbles haughtily, stretches like a cat before ambling to the bathroom. He snags the toast on the way to the door, picks up his backpack, and they leave together, the warmth of the apartment shutting off behind them. 

-

 

“ _ Number mom,”  _ Charlie sings under his breath, “ _ Number mom, you’re my number one, I know I can always count on you.” _

 “What are you singing?” Frank says from his seat on the sofa, carefully carving off his toenails.

 “A song I wrote when I was a kid,” Charlie says, carefully writing the line out as he compares it side by side to his coded shorthand. “I’m writing it down for my homework.”

 “Huh. Kinda catchy,” Frank says, and hums it back to him. It’s several basic chord progressions, and Charlie grimaces when Frank hums an E instead of an F, but watching him do his weird hip-sway dance around the apartment makes up for it. 

 “You know,” Frank says after a minute or so of this, “You’re not half bad at this shit. You know that, right?”

 Charlie chest swells. “Thanks, man.”

 “Nah, it’s nothing. I’m just glad the classes were a good investment,” Frank says, and finishes cutting his half-sharp nail off. Charlie pauses to watch him, with his bug eyes and flyaway hair, how he grunts as he sheers through the nail with a clean swipe. And Charlie wonders, not for the first or last time, how life might have been if Frank had stuck around all those years ago. Charlie would have had an upbringing untouched by poverty; he might have had actual music lessons, might have never lain in bed at night, fearing the creak of his door opening when he knows his mother is asleep and there’s only one other man in the house, but it can’t be Uncle Jack opening his door because it  _ can’t _ be, it has to be the Ni-

_ No no no no no _ , he thinks, pushing that back down, both the memories and the wondering, what’s been is been, what was done was done, and besides, would he have ever met Mac? Would he have ever met Dee? The white noise is almost a scream-

 “Charlie? You okay?”

 Charlie realises his head is in his hands. 

 “I’m fine,” he says quickly. “Pass me a beer.”

 Frank lobs one at him, and Charlie jams it open with his palm and the edge of the table. 

 If Frank notices he’s shaking, he doesn’t say a word, and Charlie takes solace in how the beer is cold, the bottle solid, here and now.

 ( _ Number mum, you’re my number one _ , but God if doesn’t wish she would have let him put a lock on his door.)

 

-

 

 When Dee meets Charlie after class the next day, he’s quiet, withdrawn. He doesn’t respond to any of her playful jabs, and the best she gets are these terse, one word responses that are finalities, the death of a conversation. It pisses her off; she thinks maybe he had another run in with the waitress, or maybe he had to kill a particularly large amount of rats. She puts it from her mind, because Charlie bounces back within a matter of hours from these sort of things. She’ll turn up to the bar tonight, and he’ll be a couple of beers in and smiling again.

 But he isn’t. When she arrives, he’s scrubbing the disabled toilet with a single minded determination, barely sparing any of them a glance as he comes and goes throughout the bar. There’s thirteen empty beer bottles, and they all belong to Charlie, according to Mac.

 “He’s hitting it hard tonight,” Dennis tells her as she checks the til. “He’s in a real mood.”

 “Not my problem,” she says, because there’s an expectant sort of tone in his voice, but perhaps too defensively, because Dennis gives her a strange look, a look that has her steadfastly ignoring Charlie, has her drinking competitively with Frank, has her drunkenly driving home without even offering Charlie a lift.

 She wakes up with a hangover and a vague, unpleasant, nebulous feeling she can’t quite place. Dee sits with this feeling all through her lecture, a pounding headache behind her eyes as she nurses a lukewarm coffee from Starbucks, and it’s not until she sees Charlie walking out of the college that she places it.

 Guilt. It’s  _ guilt _ . 

 He’s already gone before she can catch up with him, so she walks back to her apartment stewing. She hasn’t done anything wrong, anyway. She has no idea what his problem is. He probably just had a bad trip.  _ It’s not her fucking problem _ . Charlie’s an adult, he can take care of himself.

 (She remembers the desperation on his face,  _ do you want to hang out? _ A little too much, but he had looked so… so  _ something _ , a dirty alley dog looking for warmth-)

 Dee grumbles while she makes her sandwich, because, okay, maybe she should have talked to him. Because that’s what friends do, or whatever. At least she should have been like,  _ hey Charlie, are you okay? _ Bare minimum, right? She ignores the guilt as she eats her lunch, does some research on her report on teaching people with learning disabilities. It’s just before she leaves for Paddy’s when she finds the app, and her guilt clears up preemptively. 

 She knows exactly how she’s going to cheer him up.

 

-

 

Charlie is on autopilot; the white noise is too loud, fuzzing at the edge of him. He can’t concentrate or think too hard because he starts thinking about things he doesn’t want to think about, things better left alone. So he mindlessly follows Dennis’s orders, mechanically responds to Mac’s comments with laughs or nods. He knows Frank is watching him, but Frank isn’t saying anything, so Charlie just mops mops mops and scrubs scrubs scrubs and when he goes to check on the furnace, he stands right in the heat of it, feels his eyes drying out as he stares into the flames. 

 He’s got a couple of spray-paint cans stashed in the vents, and a popper or two hidden in the supply closet. As he thinks about the relief this would bring, he realises it’s been several weeks since he inhaled anything, got high on anything.

 That should  _ feel _ good, right?

 When Dee shows up later in the afternoon, Charlie’s fingers are almost worn smooth from how hard he’s been gripping the mop, and he’s a cool twelve beers in. Hyperfocused, dragging the mop along the back room in perfect strokes, and when Dee calls his name, he doesn’t hear her. When she hesitantly puts her hand on his shoulder, Charlie almost jumps out of his skin even as turning to face her feels like he’s dragging himself through tar.

 “Charlie,” Dee says. “I want to show you something.”

 “Okay,” he hears himself say, and he watches as he gives her his phone. She fiddles with it for a few minutes, and he watches, enraptured by the thin fluttering of bones beneath the skin of her hand, graceful patterns, and then she’s handing his phone back to him. His camera is on, and she says impatiently, “Take a photo of the label on Frank’s whiskey bottle.”

 Still operating on automatic, he does, and suddenly there’s a robotic voice saying something.

 “ _ Wild Turkey is distilled at a very low proof to-” _

__ He doesn’t understand at first, until Dee scans the headline of Frank’s newspaper, “ _ Millionaire Man Meets Minty Manny _ ,” a headline that had sounded so stupidly great that Frank had been mumbling it under his breath all afternoon,  _ the phone is reading to him. _

__ He stares dumbly at it.

 “I thought it would be useful for when you come across words you’re not sure how to say,” Dee explains. “It’s free as well,” she continues, clearly waiting for him to say something. 

 Charlie drags his gaze up to hers, and it feels a little easier. Her eyes are bright and impatient, Dee waits for no-one, especially not the white noise fuzzing through his sinuses.

 “Wow, dickbag,” Dee says, raising her eyebrows. “A thank you would be nice.”

 Charlie looks down at the phone, at the gift she’s given him, and back up at her again, and the tightness in his heart is like a fist gathering everything in his chest, holding him so tightly that there isn’t  _ room _ for the white noise, and suddenly it’s just Dee and Charlie again. He can feel his fingertips aching, the strain in his thighs from being in a slight crouch for hours on end, the transition so sudden and sharp he exhales in a rush, his breath cracking out of him in a  _ huh _ , the same  _ huh _ he made before he kissed her.

 “Thanks, Dee,” Charlie says quietly, and Dee smiles at him. It’s a secretive little smile, and suddenly, all Charlie wants to do is put the music in his chest down onto paper.

 

-

 

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Charlie says an hour or so before they close up, and Dennis looks up from his phone to see Charlie bending down, helping Dee pick up some dropped limes. From how Dee is rubbing her elbow and from the angle of Charlie’s mop, he can surmise Charlie bumped into her and she dropped them. Charlie passes the fruit back to her, and they both smile at each other kind of sweetly, kind of awkwardly. 

 Dennis watches them with a keen eye. They think Dennis doesn’t notice, but he does. Of course he does. How could he not notice Charlie’s sudden mood swing?

 He’s noticed how Charlie is sneaking looks at his sister. He’s noticed how Dee looks at Charlie a little too longer than strictly normal. He’s noticed how Charlie isn’t laughing at their Dee-jokes, and this rankles, the dynamics turning out of something he can control. It’s unacceptable. It’s affecting the bar, it’s affecting their dynamics, and it’s affecting  _ him _ .

 Dennis wipes down the bartop, thinking, thinking, thinking. Dee is only useful when her confidence is low, susceptible to manipulation. Charlie is only useful when he’s on edge, easily directed. 

 This can be easily fixed, he thinks, with a bit of patience and good timing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a shorter chapter than I wanted but I hope u enjoy!!
> 
> idk about you guys but I've been kind of meh about the new season, chardee retcon aside? it's not bad by any stretch but like............ iconic moments have been few and far between???? im hoping the final ep is a Banger but who knows ig
> 
> anyway bless!!!!!!!! the app is real and number mom is 100% mine.. .trademarked intellectual property..

**Author's Note:**

> Updates aren't going to be incredibly frequent (maybe every fortnight?) but this fic is entirely planned out!!!!!! so stay with me lol  
> hope u enjoyed!!


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